Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Another tour has come full circle. My feet touched down on Olympia soil yesterday after a twenty-three hour train-ride from Williston, ND. Actually, I missed the train in Williston by a minute and had to have my parents drive me to Wolf Point, MT, at 80 mph, in order to catch up with it. (Wolf Point is 150 miles away from Williston.) It is a powerless sensation see that line of boxcars picking up speed. We managed to beat the train to Wolf Point by only five minutes. I was on copwatch for most of the chase-- binoculars firmly affixed.

The train-ride itself was good. I read a couple hundred pages of the Illuminatus trilogy. Jonah "Blandow" Carpenter picked me up in Seattle, along with Alex Stevens who had arrived the day before. Jonah found $30 on the ground outside the train-yard and treated Alex and me to breakfast with it. I puttered around Olympia, yesterday afternoon, and then spent last night at Nina's.

Now it's Tuesday, and it's raining. My morale is still searching for a toehold on Life's mildewed climbing-wall. However, check this-- my astrologist, Melissa Mooncat, has this to say:

"Took a peak at your stars and a BIG JUPITERIAN UPSWING Is just around the corner! By JOVE! November 24th has Jupiter (EXPAND, Adventure, Seek out your TRUTH, Travel) moving into your house of LEO! (CREATING, shining like the SUN, performing, being in front of 'God and EVERYBODY!'...)."


I will wait until then to make any drastic life decisions. That's what's going on for me, though-- I feel like I need to figure out so much right now. Where to live? What job to apply for? What kind of music to write and focus on? If I had money, and time to kill, I would hire Nerviz to help produce my next hip-hop project-- Sand Pan! However, I realize that I'm sort of gray-haired to continue trying to build a lucrative career as the next, great underground rapper. That might sound cynical, but I doubt 17-year-old kids-- the ones who predominantly support rap (or punk) music-- would fully relate to my twisted tale of a Pagan demigod who blows dollar bills out his butt. Actually, now that I frame it that way, 17-year-olds might be the ones who'll appreciate it the most. See? I've just spun myself in a perfect circle, and I'm back to square one. The geometry of catatonia! (Henry Miller wrote, "More obscene than anything is inertia. More blasphemous than the bloodiest oath is paralysis.") The boldest move I could make right now would be to tap into the Big, Friendly Folk circuit. I'd focus mostly on learning a bunch more cowboy-poems and country songs to supplement my folk-rap set. To the middle-aged crowd I'm a breath of fresh air; they see me as young and savvy and safe. I'm a bridge to their children's generation and they don't mind paying me fairly. This would be a saner life for me, but not as exhilarating and fantastically creative as writing layered, Tom Robbins-like, hip-hoperas. Not making money, though, is grinding my country confidence into the ground. I suppose I can always return to my bizarro rap rhythms when I can afford that luxury. I forget, sometimes, that there's no rush.

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